College Board Intends to Drop AP Programs in Four Subjects

Officials overseeing the Advanced
Placement program have
announced that they intend to
drop AP classes and exams in four
subject areas, in a pullback expected
to affect about 12,500 students
and 2,500 teachers worldwide.

Following the end of the 2008-09
academic year, there will be no AP
courses or exams in Italian, Latin
literature, French literature, and
computer science AB, said officials
at the College Board, the New York
City-based nonprofit organization
that owns the AP brand.

The College Board has in past
years withdrawn one undersubscribed
AP course at a time, but has
never taken so many courses off its
table of offerings in the half-century
since the program started as a
way for students to take college-level
courses and potentially earn
college credit while still in high
school.

Trevor Packer, the College
Board vice president who oversees
the AP program, said the decision
was made at a trustee
meeting on March 27, and that
AP teachers in the affected subjects
were notified by e-mail
April 3. “Of course, it’s sad for
them,” he said of the teachers.

Resource Allocation

Mr. Packer said the decision was
made principally because of demographic
considerations.

Only a tiny fraction of the members
of underrepresented minority
groups who take AP exams take the
tests in one of those four affected
subject areas, he said.

The College Board has made it a
priority to reach such students, including
those who are African-
American and Hispanic.

“For us, [the question is], are we
able to achieve our mission of
reaching a broader range of students?”
Mr. Packer said.

He added that no additional AP
courses would be cut for at least
the next five years.

Mr. Packer noted that the Italian
program was 400 percent
over budget, owing to the small
number of students taking the
exams.

The Italian program is the only
one among the subjects that would
not be represented in some other
way in the AP program.

The College Board will continue
to offer AP French Language, for
example, and introductory-level
computer science.

Mr. Packer also held out the possibility
that the Italian program
might be saved if outside money
were forthcoming.

“This wasn’t a situation of us
going to the trustees and saying we
need to cut costs,” he said, but a
question of deploying resources
“less diffusely.”

Dropping Courses

The College Board plans to stop offering some Advanced
Placement courses and tests after the 2008-09 school year.

SOURCE: The College Board

Mr. Packer said each of the 33 remaining
AP programs would see its
budget grow.

“We can’t have good supports
for all 37 subject areas … and we
don’t want any AP subject area to
be deemed a so-called second-class
citizen,” he said. “It’s essential that
our top funding requirement
should be … professional development
and instructional materials.”

Vol. 27, Issue 32, Page 13

Published in Print: April 9, 2008, as College Board Intends to Drop AP Programs in Four Subjects

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